These events left Ann Lee deeply disturbed and assaulted by guilt, but Standerin did not leave her. But neither argumentation nor priestly intervention enabled him to thwart his wife’s intention to be the “bride of Christ.”Ī simple and good man, Standerin was hardly compatible with his stubborn wife, but over the next several years Lee gave birth to four children, all of whom died in infancy or early childhood. On January 5, 1762, Ann’s father coerced into marrying his blacksmith apprentice, Abraham Standerin, who did not easily accept Lee’s resolve to remain celibate. The Wardley Society, or as it was then called, the Shaking Quakers, had many things in common with the Quakers (Society of Friends) founded by George Fox, such as the reliance upon “inner light” for the revelation of spiritual truth. In 1758, Lee found the spiritual refuge she had been looking for when she joined a religious society led by former Quakers, Jane and James Wardley. Ultimately, she became convinced that the sexual act was the original sin of Adam and Eve and that lust is the root of all evil. In time, she would incorporate those feelings into her analysis of human sinfulness. In the midst of the moral decay she witnessed in the city, Ann developed an early revulsion for sex. Lee exhibited a religious bent early in life, found living in the crowded industrial city difficult. By her twenties, she was serving as a cook in the public infirmary and madhouse. Since education for a girl of Lee’s station was out of the question, she was illiterate and found employment in the textile mills of Manchester.

Except for a parish church record of her baptism in 1742, very little is known of Ann Lee’s childhood. Her father John Lee was a blacksmith whose meager income barely fed his family. The second of eight children, Ann Lee was born on February 29, 1736, in a poor district of Manchester, England, known as Toad Lane.

Shouting by Annie Lee